There are individuals who believe, whenever they're presented with
evidence of what the Declaration of Independence called government's
"long train of abuses and usurpations", that it's sufficient to lift
their noses into the air and sneer haughtily, "Hmmphconspiracy
theory!"

It used to be only liberals who argued with nouns: "HmmphAyn
Rand!" or "HmmphRush Limbaugh!" Lately, the malady seems to be
spreading. Even right-wing talk show hosts will scoff at those who
believe Barack Obama may not be legally qualified to hold office and
say, "Hmmphbirthers!", instead of offering a legitimate
counter-argument.

On the assumption that any exist.

Depending on who you listen to, human history goes back six or
eight thousand years. In all of that time, without a doubt, there have
been hundredsmore likely thousandsof small groups who gathered
in secret to make plans that wouldn't have been approved of by the
majority who were not involved in the planning. That's the essence of
conspiracy: small group, secretand probably illegal or unpopularplans.

A few modern examples ought to suffice. It seems appropriate, at
the moment, to begin with the 1773 Boston Tea Party, in which a gang
of hooligans (from the government's point of view, as well as that of
most Bostonians), incensed at a new tax on imported tea, disguised
themselves (not very well) as Indians, boarded British ships in Boston
Harbour, smashed cargoes of tea chests open, and threw them into the
water.

Does anybody think they gathered there spontaneously, as sort of
an eighteenth century flash mob? Or was the action planned by ...
conspirators?

In 1794, wondering why their fathers had even bothered to fight
the War of Independence, the next generation of conspirators were
secretly gathering in certain western Pennsylvania churches, tarring
and feathering the local collectors of Treasury Secretary Alexander
Hamilton's hated new excise tax on whiskey, burning down their homes
(now that's what I call a serious tax protest), and shooting holes
through the stills of neighbors who were willingly paying the federal
tax.

The United States of America itself is the result of a conspiracy
to overthrow the authority of the British king in North America. This
plot was not only unpopular with at least two thirds of the people
living here at the time, it was highly illegal. Some signers of the
Declaration of Independence were arrested, imprisoned, tortured, and
murdered. If our side had lost the war, it would have happened to them
all.

Because they were conspirators.

Another group of conspiratorsextremely wealthy and powerful
oneswhom some folks believe should have been arrested, imprisoned,
tortured, and murdered, met in 1910 under the most secret and secure
conditions possible at the time, at a resort on Jekyll Island, Georgia
to plot out the "scientific" currency system we now call the Federal
Reserve.

Skip ahead half a century or so. The United States Congress
itself, based on acoustical evidence derived from police recordings,
now says that there was a second rifle firing at Jack Kennedy in
Dallas. Two or more people planning a crime like that constitute a
conspiracy.

It turns out that the so-called Gulf of Tonkin Incident, which a
few years later propelled America into the Vietnam War, never
happened. Somebodyseveral somebodieswould have had to make up
the elaborate lie, insert it into the news stream, and keep it there
until it had its desired political effect. We call people like that
conspirators.

Similarly, there is substantial evidence that the administration
of Franklin Delano Rooseveltdesperate to get a war started in
order to distract the public from its disastrous and embarrassing
mishandling of the Great Depressionknew that Pearl Harbor was
going to be attacked by the Japanese navy and was actually notified by
a Hawaii radar operator and others that the enemy planes were on the
way.

If we are to believe the official government stories, there was a
conspiracy involved in the 1995 destruction of the Murrah federal
building in Oklahoma City, while the World Trade Center buildings were
brought down in 2001, and the Pentagon damaged, by a mostly Saudi
conspiracy.

So conspiracies do happen, after alland those who deny it
should probably be suspected of being involved in a conspiracy,
themselves.

Just kidding.

No, I'm not.

Yes, I am.

Let's move on.

One of the most worrisome unanswered questions staring Americans
in the face at the moment is this: whydespite the fact that most
of us oppose Barack Obama's collectivist agenda in general, and the
healthcare travesty that he and his minions recently foisted on us in
particulardid members of both houses of congress vote Obama's way,
even though they know it will mean losing their jobs this fall or in
2012?

We've all heard what I call the Profiles in Courage answer, that
noble, selfless Democrats are gladly willing to sacrifice themselves and
their careers if it means advancing the Grand Plan another notch or
two.

But remember who it is we're talking about here. There's nothing
noble or selfless about politicians and there never has been. Putting
it charitably, Profiles in Courage is a compendium of Democratic
mythology, ghostwritten for an ambitious young Massachusetts Senator
who never did a thing for himself if he could pay to have it done by
others.

It's been suggested that Democratic Senators and Congressmen
occupying districts likely to go to the Republicans next timesome
of which only went to Democrats last time out of well-deserved hatred
and revulsion for George W. Bush and his policieswere promised
cushy jobs in what we laughingly call the "private sector", if the
voters kick them out. The trouble with this theory is that it would
still leave the Democratic Party as a whole out of power for a
dangerous interval during which their "accomplishments" could be
repealed.

Make no mistake, the Democrats are socialists (Republicans are,
too, but that's another story). Socialism is the doctrine that the
wants and needs of the group come before the rights of the individual.
The fact is, over its 180-odd years, socialism has failed abjectly
everywhere it's been tried, in country after country, and most people
are now aware of it. This is the last shot socialists are ever going
to get before history finally closes the door on them forever, and the
hysteria of their actions during the past two years proves they know
it.

So the likeliest answer to why the Democrats have taken this
politically dangerous course is that their leaders have promised them
they'll throw the next election, by various means technological or
otherwise, and they won't have to pay the consequences for what they've
done.

Or the election will be postponed, using the excuse of some
manufactured calamity, just like Pearl Harbor, or the Gulf of Tonkin
incident.

Or the election will be cancelled altogether, and America will
begin a descent into madness and mass murder, exactly like Germany,
Russia, China, Cambodia, and all the other nations that succumbed to
socialism.

Apparently I'm not the only person worried about this likelihood.
Various talk show hosts have mentioned it. And check out this pair of
articles:

There are legitimate questions being asked here, and plenty of
reasons to be asking them. The Obama regime has been working up to
something extreme from the beginning, attacking talk radio hosts and
FoxNews, excoriating the Internet, characterizing all those who oppose
their socialist agenda as racists, neofascists, even Nazis, comparing
them to the Ku Klux Klan, and even accusing them of encouraging
violence.

Janet Napolitano, of the unconstitutional Department of Homeland
Security, perhaps under the undue influence of militant leftists at
places like the Southern Poverty Law Center, has issued warnings to
police all over America, identifying certain peopleanyone who
dislikes Obama or his policies, is conspicuously religious, conversant
with the Constitution, a supporter of Ron Paul, advocates hard money,
homeschools their kids, or owns gunsas a potentially violent
problem.

To me, and to others, this looks like nothing more than advance
preparation for a day when the government rounds up the noisiest
dissenters, accuses them of domestic terrorism, and makes them vanish
into any of the secret torture prisons that they've built around the
world.

Can anything be done to prevent it? Can anything be done to save
what somebody once called "the best idea anybody ever had for a
country"?

You are doing it right now, just by reading this article. And you
can do a great deal more by sending other people to read it, or by
sending it to them. The government likes to hatch its plots in the
dark. Help us shine the cleansing light of truth on what they're
doing. If enough individuals are talking about it, they may be
deterred.

For the moment, that may be our only hope.

Next, you have to stay madand grimly determinedwith regard
to the next election, if it happens. Remember the way you felt as they
ignored the people and broke law after law to take our doctors,
nurses, and hospitals away from us, force us to buy their "insurance"
and threaten us with fines, imprisonment, and ultimately death if we
refused.

One way or another, the next three years could end the 200-year
struggle against socialism. But be wary. The only way to win, at
present, is to support Obama's opponents. However once in power again,
Republicans will not be naturally inclined to give up power, or to
repeal, nullify, or otherwise dispose of what the Democrats have left
behind, but to build on itexactly as Democrats did with Bush's
illegal policies and practicesand to twist them into their own
image.

Neither party can be trusted. It is time, in the words of the
Declaration of Independence, "to provide new guards for [our] future
security."

This is a beginning.

Like this? Why not pay the author!Select amount then click "Donate Now"

Pay to L. Neil Smith
lneil@netzero.com

Four-time Prometheus Award-winner L. Neil Smith has
been called one of the world's foremost authorities on the ethics
of self-defense. He is the author of more than 25 books, including
The American Zone, Forge of the Elders, Pallas, The Probability
Broach, Hope (with Aaron Zelman), and his collected articles
and speeches, Lever Action, all of which may be purchased
through his website "The Webley Page" at
lneilsmith.org.

Neil is presently at work on Ares, the middle volume
of the epic Ngu Family Cycle, and on Where We Stand:
Libertarian Policy in a Time of Crisis with his daughter, Rylla.

See stunning full-color graphic-novelizations of The
Probability Broach and Roswell, Texas which feature the
art of Scott Bieser at www.BigHeadPress.com
Dead-tree versions may be had through the publisher, or at
www.Amazon.com where you will also find Phoenix Pick editions
of some of Neil's earlier novels. Links to Neil's books at
Amazon.com are on his website